


Green Park

by alcyone (Alcyone301)



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 23:02:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1405858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alcyone301/pseuds/alcyone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Are the Jagiellos conscious of their happiness? Probably not. Fortunatos nimium …’. </i><br/>- TIM, chpt 1.</p><p>alltoseek: But the question is, is Stephen finally conscious of his own happiness? </p><p> </p><p>Summary: Would Stephen know happiness if it slapped him upside the head?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green Park

It was approaching midnight when the supper party began to break up. When only intimates of the house remained – Diana Maturin’s friends Lucy Carrington and Emily Thurlow, and Gedymin Jagiello – and the ever-hopeful Anne Trevor, doggedly posturing for the oblivious young Lithuanian – Stephen Maturin felt himself released from his duties as host and gratefully lapsed into his more comfortable, benignly half-withdrawn self. Diana and her two friends were discussing some obscure matter of London social import, which for all he could tell functioned in similar ways to the government’s various intelligence branches, and with perhaps greater speed and accuracy. 

Anne Trevor, once again unable to engage Jagiello’s interest, solicited his arm to take her to her carriage, waiting on the pavement this past hour. She took her effusive leave from Diana, who matched her insincerity with a finely judged limp embrace. As she turned away, Diana shared an ironic glance with her husband, caught the question in his eye and said kindly, ‘My dear, we shall certainly gossip for hours. You must be longing for your sanctuary – pray do not stand upon ceremony. Away with you.’ With a smile he rose, kissed her upon the forehead, each cheek, and her mouth – felt her answering smile under his nearly chaste lips, acknowledging the blessing - a brief bow to the ladies, and he was off. Descending the bright, graceful staircase, exchanging his pumps for a battered old pair of boots, and accepting his cloak from the footman, he left his own house with a pleasant sense of liberation. 

His way took him down through the Green Park, along the banks of the lake in St James, through Whitehall side streets and along the embankment to the Grapes Inn in the Savoy. The night was cool, initially pleasantly so after the close rooms in Half Moon Street. In the park he could smell the incipient spring; the mist was rising, thickening as he approached the river, and the pervasive scents of vernal growth mingled with those of the river-borne mud and decay – vegetal, of course, but bearing an intriguing hint of small necrotic creatures as well. The tide was out, and he briefly considered looking along the banks; however, he was eager for his comfortable rooms, and there was little or nothing unfamiliar the receding Thames could drop on his doorstep. 

The door of the Grapes was on the latch, and taking up a candle from the table at the foot of the stairs, he ascended. Dropping his cloak across a table just inside his own door, taking care not to upset the dish of bones waiting there to be added to the partially-articulated owl skeleton on the mantel, he noticed the parcel he had meant to take to Diana tonight. He had not thought of it at all, nor had she mentioned it – not a hint of reproach, not even concern. Forbearance from that quarter was still surprising.  


He crossed to the grate. The fire had gone out, but there were fresh coals laid upon a bed of kindling, and it was the work of a few moments to light it. He stood before the fire, abstractedly, watching the coals catch; from time to time he stirred the fire, adding coal from the scuttle on the hearth. With one arm on the mantel, unselfconscious, his face relaxed; a small smile appeared, and spread to his eyes.

He stood there for many minutes, his thoughts lazily ranging he hardly knew where; after a while, as he watched the fire evolve from a reluctant yellow spark through crackling, eager, consuming flames to a steady, quiet flicker above the spreading glow, they took the form of speculation about the nature of fire. He walked into the inner room, kicked off his boots, shed his wig, coat and neckcloth and went to the untidy bookcase, withdrew Lavoisier’s _Traité Élémentaire de Chimie_ , and returned. Drawing the deep armchair closer the fire, he settled into it and began to read. For the next hours, he scarcely moved, once rising to fetch a small glass of brandy, once or twice to stir the fire and add more coals. 

Some time later, the fire dying down once more, he rose, relit the candle, banked the fire and walked into the inner room. Quickly stripping off his clothes, he used the chamber-pot, threw on a soft, tattered nightshirt pulled from under the single thin pillow, and climbed into the bed. He blew out the candle and lay in the dark, relaxing as the cold bedding warmed, imperceptibly drifting from a consideration of the oxidative theory of combustion, its evident connection with animal heat, its possible application in the understanding of pyrexia, to a general unformed contemplation of warming, the slowness of temperature changes in bodies of water, the earth turning to the sun, and so to sleep. 

He woke in the blue dawn, his first thoughts in music rather than in words; it was minutes before he realised that he was internally singing _Fiamma amorosa e bella_. Charmed as he so often was by the mysterious ways of the mind, by evidence that cogent thought and even wit could proceed without his being in any way aware of it, he rose, made a sketchy job of washing, drew on a pair of loose trousers and a dressing gown, and pulled the bell. He was stirring up the fire when a brief knock preceded Deborah, putting her head in at the door and asking whether it was coffee he was wanting? Upon being assured it was, she produced a tray with a cup and a large pot wrapped in a padded flannel upon it. Placing the pot and cup on the table, she made a quick tour of the room, collecting the brandy glass and dishes from the previous morning. Looking up from the blessed cup, made strong as he liked from his own private stock of the right Mocha beans, his frown prevented her collecting the clothing cast about the room and sent her out the door before she could tell him what a lovely day it was, or offer an unwanted early breakfast.

After the second cup, he set the pot on the hearth and brought his cello – his seagoing cello: there was a much finer one, a gift from his extravagantly generous wife, that stayed in the house in Half Moon Street – to the table and began thoughtfully picking out the melody he woke with. This became a long improvisation on that theme that eventually yielded to a succession of familiar subjects as they presented themselves to his quiet, receptive mind. He broke off with a snort of laughter when he realised he had arrived at the finale of _Don Giovanni_ , unconsciously making a cheerful ditty of the roaring flames of hell. He emptied the pot, the coffee now lukewarm, the temperature of the hearth it sat upon, thought for a while, and then played a series of Boccherini sonatas. As he paused between movements of the fourth, there was a brief knock and Deborah entered again, collecting the pot and enquiring if he wanted another, and perhaps breakfast. It had somehow become mid-morning, and he declined – it was late enough for him to set out for Half Moon Street without risking arriving before Diana began to surface from her usual deep, deep sleep. Dressing in a worn pair of breeches, a nearly clean shirt and neckcloth, a favourite waistcoat and a disreputable tie-wig, he pulled on his boots, banked the fire and set the screen before it, and taking up Diana’s parcel went out.

The morning was sunny, luminous rather than glaring, particularly near the river; there was still some mist and the returning tide had obliterated the heavier odours of the night before. Walking along the embankment he found himself thinking in scent and colour: the warm, familiar odour of Diana’s bedroom yesterday morning, a dim bluish colour, the curtains partly drawn; the deep green and pale ivory of the bedclothes, and his wife smiling at him, warm and pink and sleepy, extending a slim arm to welcome him. 

The lake in St James Park was alive with waterfowl, the resident pelicans ungainly beside the grebes, mallards, pochards. The air was filled with birdsong as he turned righthanded into the Green Park. There he paused, hearing robins, finches, tits, wrens; the view was beautiful. The familiar contours and trees were new-dressed in pale green; eranthis, galanthus, crocus and squill dotted the lawns, bright life springing up under the young sun. He smiled, breathing deeply as he looked around, almost bewildered. He thought, ‘What is this sensation?’ He had spent many years and perhaps gallons of ink examining the world about him and that within, dissecting emotions, motivations, actions; he had used his intellect as his habitual defense and surest guide. So he attempted to describe his state to himself: I am smiling, he thought. My breathing is quiet but rapid, and my pulse – he felt for it – is slightly elevated; my countenance is mildly flushed, but there is no apparent pyrexia. The feeling resembles elation, but it is not excitement, nor is there a specific focus for it. Reflexively, as a diagnostic tool, he inwardly counted over the many fevers that are abroad in London at this time of year. It is absurd. His smile widened as he reflected on how well, how very well he felt. And the diagnosis is there: he is happy, profoundly happy. He walked on, no fretful, questing words in his head, only serenity.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: These characters are the property of the much-regretted Patrick O’Brian and his heirs, and are borrowed with profound respect and love.  
> Beta and motivation by the incomparable alltoseek.
> 
> The music:  
> \- The madrigal _Fiamma amorosa e bella_ by Bartolomeo Tromboncino (c.1470-1535), or perhaps Marchetto Cara (1465-1525).  
>  \- The part of the finale of _Don Giovanni_ , W.A. Mozart (1756-1791), where he is dragged bodily down to hell by demons (really pretty ominous music, but Mozart apparently found it hard to write uncompromisingly grim, and it does lend itself to a cheerful variant).  
> \- Four cello sonatas by Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805), G3, G1, G8, and G10 in C, F, B flat and E flat. The sonatas would take a little over 40 minutes to play.


End file.
